Current personal computer systems support a variety of storage device drives. These drives may store information on magnetic discs, a.k.a. floppy discs, or on optical discs, such as CD-ROMs or a re-writable phase change discs (PD). Storage discs may be internal; i.e. permanently incorporated into the drive, or the discs may be removable. The drives themselves may be permanent fixtures of a particular computer system or they may be removable. As used herein, the phrase "removable disc drive" means any drive, internal or removable, that accepts removable discs.
Some CD-ROM disc drives provide an internal mechanism to automatically execute programs residing on a CD-ROM upon insertion of the CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive. This mechanism searches the root directory of the CD-ROM to locate a file called "autorun.inf". A typical "autorun.inf" file looks like the following: EQU [AutoRun] EQU Load=ProgramName.exe EQU Icon=ProgramName.ico
In response to an "autorun.inf" file the CD-ROM disc drive causes the computer operating system to display the icon for ProgramName and to automatically execute ProgramName.exe.
In contrast to these CD-ROM disc drives, most removable disc drives lack an internal mechanism to automatically initiate execution of autorun.inf files, forcing computer users to take some positive action to initiate execution of programs residing on discs inserted into a removable disc drive. Hereinafter, removable disc drives lacking an internal mechanism to initiate automatic execution of programs stored on removable discs shall be referred to as basic removable disc drives.